Prepration For The Paper

Through the twist and turns of Mark Twain’s life his literary works have varied in many ways such as their subject matter and their tone, earlier works having a much more light and carefree tone, and the later works having a much more dark and concerned tone. With all these different books and different styles there are few connectors between them. However I was able to find something that connected The Adventures Of Huck Finn, Editorial Wild Oats, A Dog’s Tale, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (just the story itself), and The War Prayer. This connection is what I would like to study, the idea of morals and the lack of them in society. Each one of these stories has a lack of morals in its own way that can be considered a reflection on the morals of society. I would like to study why Twain wrote about these lack of morals and what truth there was behind it in the society of Twain’s time. To do so I will use the Gale Research center to find articles about the said stories and their ideas of how morals are presented in them along with looking up how society was at the time and trying to find evidence of these lack of morals.

The Story Of Mark Twain

Halley’s comet approached the earth yet again on November 16, 1835; it was two weeks later that its gift to earth was found. His name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, otherwise known as the brilliant Mark Twain. He was born as the sixth kid in a family of seven, where only 4 of the kids, including himself, actually survived past childhood. He lived in Missouri for his early life, birthed in Florida, Missouri and grew up in Hannibal, Missouri (the place in which the main town for Tom Sawyer and The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn is inspired by). It was in this town in which he grew up and learned many of his basic principles. Due to Missouri’s entrance as a slave state his dad and uncle did own slaves, but unlike other Southerners who hated them and looked down upon them because of these origins, he grew to like them due to this. As a kid he often hung out with the slaves and listened in on their stories and superstition, enjoying their way and take on life. This experience is what prompted him to write a like relationship in The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn between Huck and Jim. At the young age of twelve he left school and got a job as a printer’s apprentice. Within three years he became a typesetting and an occasional contributor to the Hannibal Journal, a newspaper journal that ran in Hannibal. After becoming an adult he diverged from his small town roots and worked as a printer in several major cities and educated himself using public libraries. After four years of this life he returned back to his home state.
It was at this time that he was convinced to take up a job as a steamboat pilot. This early job was highly rewarding and a job that he highly enjoyed. Due to this nice lifestyle, which he loved, many of his early written works were much happier, due to his happiness. He didn’t find the same sadness in the world as he did later so he didn’t write about it; instead he merely focused on the happy. Sadly this came to an end in the 1861 with the breakout of the civil war. The traffic on the Mississippi was closed and thusly he had no more jobs to work. He joined the confederate army but quit within two weeks of doing so.
He started to travel west now going to explore those lands. His brother got a job in the Nevada territory and he followed him to that area and started mining for a while. Also while he was in the west he wrote more newspaper articles. It was here in which he first used his pen name, Mark Twain. Soon after this his first literary success came in form of a tall tale titled The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.
It was after this he which he gained more attention and went on a few reporting jobs. After these jobs he met Oliva Langdon and soon after this he married her. After a while the two moved to Hartford, Connecticut. It was during this time in which he wrote a huge bulk of his work. During this time it was not overly happy like the works of prior but it also wasn’t overly sad and critical like the works of the future, it contained a good mix of both. A good example of this would be The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, where there are many social ideas being critiqued but there is also the fun adventure element of the prior book, Tom Sawyer.
During these years he obtained a substantial amount of money from his stories and spent all of it on a rich and extravagant lifestyle. He also invested in many things such as new inventions of the time and ran his own publishing company for a bit. He did some lecture circuits at times, giving lectures to those that wanted to hear them also to gain money.
In 1896 his daughter Suzy died which launched Twain into a deep depression. This lasted for most of the rest of his life. During these years he focused on his last works, which were much darker due to his sadness of the time. He also was very critical of Imperialist countries considering what they were doing as wrong and wishing for them to stop.
In 1910 when Haley’s comet returned to earth it took away this gift just as it left it here, as he died one day later from a heart attack.

2nd Reading Quotes

“A gentleman shoots at you through the window and cripples me; a bomb-shell comes down the stove-pipe for your gratification and sends the stove-door down my throat; a friend drops in to swap compliments with you, and freckles me with bullet-holes till my skin won't hold my principles; you go to dinner, and Jones comes with his cowhide, Gillespie throws me out of the window, Thompson tears all my clothes off, and an entire stranger takes my scalp with the easy freedom of an old acquaintance; and in less than five minutes all the blackguards in the country arrive in their war-paint, and proceed to scare the rest of me to death with their tomahawks (27-28).”
All the bad things that could possibly happen to the main character, (who in this story is unnamed), happen to him in the short time in which he is this publishing spot. The method of hyperbole is used to describe these events, being down as “bomb-shells”, “bullet-holes” and even scalping. The brutal and violent methods that are pictured shows the reaction of the public to newspapers in a real way. Twain is using this hyperbole to show that newspaper complains are more condescending than they should be and that they are often given to the wrong ears, since the main character, who is new there and had no prior experience with the paper, was the one to be given all the pain. It gives the idea that those that are in the business the longest will be able to survive by sacrificing younger reporters to the complains of the masses.

“I had rather all his friends should die than that I should be driven to the verge of lunacy again in trying to cipher out the meaning of another such production as the above (51)”.
After being confronted with a confusing letter about the news of a friend’s death, the main character tries to get the story together to be able to report it even though the owner of the newspaper does not wish to waste space with it. After trying to find out the meaning to be able to do so anyway the main character gets frustrated and gives up on it stating the said quote. The care for others is less than the amount of work that one has to do for it. There is a sense of non-caring that shows up. While he would have cared if it were clearly written, due to the trouble there is in getting the point of it, the caring goes away and it doesn’t matter. Doing less work is more important than other people and caring.

"Think of it? Why, I think it is good. I think it is sense. I have no doubt that every year millions and millions of bushels of turnips are spoiled in this township alone by being pulled in a half-ripe condition, when, if they had sent a boy up to shake the tree— (56)”.
As the wise man states "Turnips don't grow on trees!" It’s something that even I know and just shows the lack of research that went into the project and how little the main character cares for accuracy. Instead of trying to write something helpful for an advice column he turns out nonsensical madness, just to get people to laugh at it and get people to buy it. Twain uses hyperbole by picking such a simple statement to mock, showing how far reaching that one is willing to go to get an audience.

“[…] [T]he less a man knows- the bigger the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands (68)”.
In the newspaper industry people are hired because they’re able to drum up noise not because they know much about the industry that they are hired to work in. This realization shows that people want to read about stuff that is entertaining more than it is factual. The more that a write stumbles makes the piece only more interesting. This would mean that those that know less are able to get more attention than those that don’t and are able to control others with their exposure. This exposure can lead others that don’t know much to follow them, which in a way can create a chain of non-knowing and brainwashing.

“And I'd have given you the best class of readers that ever an agricultural paper had—not a farmer in it, nor a solitary individual who could tell a watermelon-tree from a peach-vine to save his life. You are the loser by this rupture, not me, Pie-plant (69)”.
In industry more business is better than the right business. Even though newspapers are supposed to educate others and teach them things, the fan base is the most important part of a newspaper so the educational aspect can be sacrificed for the sake of obtaining it. Capital is much more important than the idea of people being smart in it. This idea is being satirized by Twain who shows just how ridiculous these papers can be just to get viewers to read them.

5 quotes

“It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger; but I done it, and I warn't ever sorry for it afterwards, neither. I didn't do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn't done that one if I'd a knowed it would make him feel that way.”
When Huck tricks Jim that it was all dream and that none of it was real, he feels bad when Jim finds out and feels bad afterwards. While it takes Huck some time he eventually apologizes to Jim for what he did wrong even though he’s black. Due to society at the time, a normal white man wouldn’t have apologized to a black man but since Huck due Jim well he cared for him and knew that he should apologize to him for what he did wrong. This shows that Huck does have feelings for Jim and that he is willing to go against society for those that he cares about. The fact that he has no regrets about it only shows stronger how the ties of friendship and caring can override societal pressures.

“We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.”
Even though he had lived in a proper home for most of his life he still finds the raft more comfortable even though it doesn’t have the normal standards of comfort that we all look for. The free and easy feeling that Huck has ton the raft is due to being away from society and on the river alone with a friend. This gives him more comfort than all the money and things could buy him. While he is away from society he is able to experience paradise and not be “cramped up” by society.

“It was a close place. I took . . . up [the letter I’d written to Miss Watson], and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: ‘All right then, I’ll go to hell’—and tore it up. It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming.”
When the Duke and the Dauphin sells Jim Huck plans to write to Miss Watson in order to get Jim back to where he belongs thinking that he belongs there. But after writing the letter he thinks about it, and Jim as a person. While he believes that the moral thing to do is to return Jim back to his “rightful” owner, he feels for Jim and he doesn’t think that it’s the best for him. After considering this conflict he realizes that his love for Jim transcends the morals that have been instilled on him, and he makes the decision that he’s willing to take any punishment to save his friend. He knows that they are awful thoughts but he thinks them anyway and lets him do this because he wants to for Jim’s sake. It shows that societal pressures and awful race relations can be overcome though it is a hard process especially for those that try to do so.

"I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their'n."
After hearing about Jim’s children and getting to know Jim’s feelings about them Huck realizes that Jim cares for his children as much as white folks cares for theirs. While during the story Huck doesn’t believe that Jim really cares for his children and believes it to be madness that Jim would want to set them free from their owners, as “they hadn’t done nothing to him”, he finally realizes that Jim cares for his children just like the white folks do. The idea that Huck would think those first thoughts shows the strength of society and racism, and his reform shows how they can be reformed and how caring isn’t race specific. It should strike an extra cord with Huck has his dad didn’t care for him at all and only wanted the money that he could get from Huck.

"Doan' le's talk about it, Huck. Po' niggers can't have no luck. I awluz 'spected dat rattlesnake-skin warn't done wid its work."
Huck tries to trick Jim with his superstition earlier in the book by putting a rattlesnake skin by Jim’s bed, which is supposedly bad luck. Jim finds this out when he’s actually bitten by a snake, which shows the bad luck of what happened. However Jim feels that he still is cursed to bad luck even after that incident. Considering all that happens after the incident to cause turmoil on the once happy raft, it can be said that maybe Jim was right about the bad luck, even though in the end he does get what he wanted in the first place. Still it shows how the idea of superstition actually can effect in their lives.

Hucky Finny

The major plot points of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are race relations in the South society, especially those of Huck and Jim. In the novel Twain shows us that blacks and whites can get along but outside influences keep them apart from each other. His intent is to show the world that black people were people too and that they could be just like white people. Major themes in the story were these race relations and that whites and blacks can get along with each other, and their equality.
Scenes in the story that proved what the theme was like advanced the theme. An allusion was used in the cases of the Grangerford’s and the Shepdardson’s which was an allusion to Romeo and Juliet, which shows a petty feud between two moral high-up families, showing the hypocrisy of the families. The setting of the story centered around the Mississippi River which dictated how the structure of the story went and provided the opportunity to show case many different situations of how white and black people acts. Many of these stops showed how the whites acted and showed their uncivil ways. The whites were characterized by being sheep-like, and many of them were foolish. The characters that Twain wanted to give the most sympathy were those that were either black or sympathized with the blacks.
When Jim is held trapped by the Phelps, Huck following Tom on his inane crusades instead of doing what he would believe would be best for his friend shows that even though Jim is close to Huck he still goes along with Tom, a white boy. Even though Huck is a radical compared to those around them he still isn’t perfect and doesn’t always do the right thing. By having Huck have these doubts we get more of a key into how hard race relations were at the time, but with the successes between the two that got them close to each other, like when they got separated and both called out for each other because they wanted the other to be safe, shows that it is indeed possible.
The River, while being the main structure behind the piece is also a symbol. It’s a symbol of freedom. While Huck and Jim are on the raft in the river they are totally free. It is during this time in which they are closest to each other which also shows that positive race relations are much easier to hold when society is removed from the equation. The freedom that the river provides makes a haven for Jim and Huck, while off the river they go into society and they are trapped by in. When they are on land they run into myriad trouble, especially when the Duke and Dauphin are involved. This can be used to show that freedom and escape from society can make one happy while, the lack of freedom and the presence of society can do the opposite.
Some motifs in the story are lies and conning, superstition, and civilization. The lies and conning is brought up heavily due to the Duke and Dauphin who tie to con whatever money they can get. During their stay with the conmen, Huck and Jim’s happiness takes a dive and they no longer have the free fun that they did before. This could mean to saw that lies and conning can do this to one person. Superstition is also a frequently seen motif having backing in some of Jim and Huck’s actions. Civilization is also a motif in the fact that it’s shown so often, usually not being so civil.
The tone of the story is cynical though it is also childish and upbeat at times. Huck doesn’t trust the civilized and believes that there is no reason for it. He distrusts the ideals that society puts on him, and while at some points he would believe them even against what he would find to be right, in the end he picks what he knows instead of what society wants to force. During the happy moments, the tone is quite upbeat, especially when Huck is able to make friends and such.
Diction plays an important part in the story, as it’s quite accurate to how the blacks talked at the time, and shows one of the big differences between the two races. Due to the wide difference in how people talked back then, diction was a key way to show how educated and civilized one is, as highly educated and civilized characters will have full and intricate diction while slaves would have their jumbled up diction.